Yesterday, Politico had a preview of Hillary Clinton's Secretary of State confirmation hearings, which are being held today; thus far, no news has been made. Most of the article is straightforward, but this paragraph surprised me:
Clinton's task is made easier by the fact that Obama quietly adopted many of his former rival’s more hawkish foreign policy positions by the end of the primaries.
... after Clinton's defeat, Obama moved closer to Clinton's mildly morehawkish worldview — and he began speaking out more stridently insupport of Israel, ratcheting up his rhetoric against Iran's leadershipand placing pre-conditions on face-to-face talks with America's enemies.
Apparently this has become such conventional wisdom that the reporters only cite one on-the-record source, New America Foundation's Steve Clemons:
... Clemons, a longtime observer of Washington's foreign policy establishment, thinks Obama and Clinton are now in such lock-step on most issues that he might use her testimony this week to signal shifts in policy — even on Israel.
“There's going to be some very subtle shading of language that will be intended to send messages to Israel and others,” said Clemons.
Well, today the transition confirmed for me that the campaign language on diplomatic negotiations -- "Obama supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions" -- is still operative. I also got in touch with Clemons yesterday. Here's what he had to say when I asked about the progression of Obama's foreign policy views in relation to those of his designated Secretary of State:
I never said that Obama was becoming more hawkish. I said, I think that [Clinton] needs to demonstrate that there's not much distance between them. I think Obama's foreign policy position's have become more obscure and less predictable. … he has hardened a little bit in terms of talking about the importance of tough talk and a sanctions approach to Iran. ... He's got a lot more flexibility. She needs to do that, too. .... That binary approach [i.e. hawks and doves] to these sets of problems is fairly vapid.
Clemons believes that the Obama team is still debating approaches to the various strategic challenges the administration will face and won't offer concrete decisions until after the inauguration. He also told me he thought there has been a change in Obama's rhetoric on Israel since the early days of the primary campaign, saying that "early on in the campaign, early, early, [Obama was] always more in the sort of Hagel 'let's be fair-minded about this.' He wasn't anti-Israel by any means, in this Hagel-Scowcroft position. [Now, Obama is more] classically pro-Israel; I actually think that having balance is pro-Israel."
So that's a little more complex than what Politico presented; it's possible the reporters are relying on other sources that weren't named. To my view, a lot of the ambiguity we've seen surrounding the new administration's foreign policy has been spurred by the nature of the transition, which doesn't reward or provide many opportunities for actual policy explanation. The president-elect's national security nominations, which come from a variety of foreign policy traditions -- Clinton has been more hawkish than Obama, James Steinberg wanted to withdraw from Iraq in 2004, Susan Rice lead the campaign's foreign policy shop and leans towards more progressive ideas -- has muddied the waters further. But it's one thing to say that Obama's foreign policy stance has become less defined and more flexible, and an entirely different thing to say unambiguously that Obama has adopted radically different policies than those of his campaign.
-- Tim Fernholz
